It's possible SNY thinks the amount extra that they would 'have' to charge would be too much and that (physical) gamers would freak out about it.

In that case, this move could make perfect sense from another angle. Pretend to take away physical to get (those) gamers to show how badly they want it to continue, and then do a (partial) reversal after a while (so it doesn't seem planned), and explain if they're going to continue making discs, that the physical game prices need to rise.

This would make me assume it's not just $10 more per copy. I'd say at least $20-$25 more per copy if not higher.

If SNY initially came out and said physical game prices are going up $25 per copy (or more) then it would look really bad on them, especially with everything (negative) going on recently. This way SNY would kinda seem like a good guy, or at least less of a bad guy, for keeping physical going against their interests. Sort of another "for the players" move. Especially if XB is going full digital with Helix.

I'd just like to point out that Playstatin's MAU averages 123 million over 2024 and 2025, per Sony's financial reports. There's 92 million PS5's currently. Even if we assume that 100% of PS5's out there have an active user and aren't sitting in a pawn shop we still have 31 million PS4 users at minimum to account for. 

It's not that simple. Many PS5 consoles will have more than 1 account, f. e. families with several PS5 gamers which want to keep their savegames separate. Also some PC gamers have active PSN accounts, for some Sony PC games it was even mandatory.

Yeah with the death of physical media, likely a generation-long crossgen period, and likely a $1000 (or thereabouts) price tag, it's looking like PS5 may be my last playstation.

But hey, the good news is, there are still dozens, possibly hundreds of quality PS4/5 games I haven't played yet, so I'll still be playing PS for many years yet.

Has anyone looked at the financials? Theyre either doing this out of greed or they are not making enough money and the increase of overhead is hurting them. I don't mind paying more for physical games if it's going to help them put out more first party titles .

They are making record profits, PS5 has made more money than all previous Playstations combined.

It's greed.

Really? They lost 200 to 400 million on concord, and on the bungie deal it took them back a few billion and marathon seems to be a failure. Now I'm keen to see their net profits